SciTech oriented blog

Using technology from partner Calxeda, HP presented that a typical web hosting site with 400 servers on 10 racks using 20 switches and 1,600 cables could be consolidated onto their ARM based Redstone platform which, even though it would require 1,600 servers for the same load, would only take up a half of a rack, two switches and 41 cables. Savings is massive with power requirements dropping from 91 kilowatts to 9.9 kilowatts and costs for the system dropping from $3.3M to $1.2M.

Yes, HP announced an ARM based server platform targeted at Cloud applications that promises to significantly reduce server costs for companies like Amazon, Google, Facebook and other entities who live off of the web.

Genre classics resurrected as graphic novelsYet, this is just the beginning of a much bigger revolution.

In a session after the announcement, HP Labs talked about the new as the first step to replace processor architectures, networking, and storage as we know it with a fabric based on their unique Memristor technology which is apparently close to initial test fabrication.

This would suggest HP is actually on the cusp of a revolution similar to the transistor. If properly executed, the new paradigm could put the company at the heart of an intense technology storm.

The key to this breakthrough, says Rothberg, is that the PGM does not rely on conventional wet chemistry to sequence DNA. Instead, it works almost entirely through conventional microchip technology, which means Ion Torrent is leveraging decades of investment in conventional transistors and chips.

So what’s the age of the $1,000 genome look like? Until we know what more of those genes actually correlate with, for most of us it won’t be so different from the present.

“Right now don’t have very many correlations between those 3 billion base pairs [of the human genome] and outcomes or medicines,” says Rothberg. He predicts it will take at least 10 years of clinical experiments with full genome sequencing to get us to the point where we can begin to unlock its value.

“And it will be 20 years before we understand cancer at same level as HIV and can come up with combinations of medicine [tailored] for each individual,” says Rothberg.

“It’s a group of highly influential regions that keep each other informed and likely collaborate on issues that concern whole brain functioning,” he said. “Figuring out what is discussed at this summit might be an important step in understanding how our brain works.””

“Frank Close tells the human story of how we solved The Infinity Puzzle – once the bane of physics

INFINITY. In mathematics, it’s a curiosity. In physics, it’s a disease. It reared its head back in the 1940s, with quantum electrodynamics (QED), the theory of electromagnetism.

QED’s equations predicted that the electron’s mass and charge were infinite. But physicists had already measured those values and found them to be finite. They were almost ready to abandon quantum field theory altogether, but within the decade physicists Richard Feynman, Julian Schwinger and Sin-Itiro Tomonaga independently found the solution: a mathematical trick known as renormalisation.

In The Infinity Puzzle, physicist Frank Close explores the history of renormalisation and physicists’ decades-long quest to banish infinity once and for all. The key to renormalisation was knowing that an electron’s charge and mass vary depending on the length scale at which you measure them. That’s because its interactions with its own electric field and virtual particles in the quantum vacuum grow larger the closer you look, skyrocketing to infinity as you zoom in on the “naked” electron.”

“The eBook Reader points out a newish technology being pitched as the next step in passive displays. Flex Lighting makes an extremely thin layer (0.05mm thick) that allows light from hidden LEDs to be distributed evenly over its whole surface. The light is directed towards the screen itself, it seems, which is certainly necessary for a reflective-type display. It only needs one or two LEDs, so battery draw is minimal, and the extreme thinness and flexibility make it work in practically any display stack.”